The Accidental Plumber.

So Mom bought a magic tool on one of her forays to those home fix-it places and she decided to try it out in our bathroom on Tuesday. I knew this was trouble right away, since one thing only can't be fixed, it always leads to a squillion more fixes.

The magic tool got the old battered white tub spout off and within minutes, Mom replaced that with the new shiny one I can see myself in. That was pretty fun. But then she said, "Well, William, as long as I'm at it, I might as well try to fix the drain stopper." This is another thing Mom has played with unsuccessfully for eons. Finally she realized this wasn't the sort of thing that would work with the plumbing so she went to that time-sucking store again and got another shiny thing I can not only see myself in but can play with!

But of course, the installation took a lot of my supervision, because as usual, whoever did the stupid repairs everywhere else in our house before we got it did the same sort of stupid thing in the tub drain! They'd used a teeny tiny drain pipe and just packed around it with putty and washers. So Mom had to go back out and get a new pipe and elbow to install the new drain stopper.

Of course, this wasn't easy, either. She was gone forever! I kept checking the hole in the tub to make sure she hadn't secretly fallen in! When she finally got home she told me she had to go to two places, and not only that, but had to buy a kit with a whole lot of parts we didn't need! For a moment I thought she said she had to buy a kitten for the repairs! Thankfully that wasn't it at all. Anyway, the actual work only took about 15 minutes. The new stopper is a fun thing to have, since I can close it by stepping on it, but I didn't appreciate the ten squillion hours of prep time. At least we won't have to do it again.

And you know what's best? When the Black Lagoon came back yesterday, it didn't come into our tub because I had closed the drain! Mom said I was a very good boy to have done that but that the Lagoon was something we'd have to call someone for. So a Roto Rooster came out. Can you believe it? From first call to a customer follow up call, the whole thing only took two hours! I'm so glad that rooster didn't eat away lots of mom time.


Pre-Mom, in attracto green.
(See the ugly white tub spout?) 


Post-Mom (with my help). And
the checkerboard tile is now white. 


The listing agent called this "updated."
Eddie gagged just seeing the photo. 


This is what we call updated. 

I was about to tell you this last night but Mom didn't feel well and I had to take care of her. She wasn't throwing up on the carpet like my bro does but said if I chased my tail for a whole long time and then stopped I'd know how she felt. So my main job today was to keep a close eye on her.